Diablo Canyon has joined the growing list of U.S. reactors to be prematurely shutdown as Pacific Gas & Electric announced a closure plan negotiated with a veritable who’s who of anti-nuclear groups captured in a joint proposal that will be filed with California regulators for approval.

If that joint proposal is accepted by the state’s Public Utilities Commission, PG&E will withdraw, with prejudice, the twin-unit plant’s operating license renewal application it submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2009.

PG&E: “Any resource procurement PG&E makes will be subject to a non-bypassable cost allocation mechanism that ensures all users of PG&E’s grid pay a fair share of the costs.”

Agency spokesman Scott Burnell explained the “with prejudice” phrase. “If applicants submit correspondence to the NRC using that term, the NRC expects that they would not resubmit the same application at a later date,” said Burrell.

But he declined to speculate whether the legal term would be binding to a new plant owner, saying it contained too many variables to answer. Without the renewal, the operating licenses for Diablo Canyon’s two reactors, which annually generate 16,000-18,000 GWh, 20% of PG&E’s generating capacity and 9% of California’s electricity, will expire in 2024 and 2025.

The deal to stop the renewal was negotiated by PG&E with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Friends of the Earth (FOE), International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245 (IBEW-1245), Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, Coalition of California Utility Employees and Environment California.

The utility put relicensing efforts on hold in 2011 after Fukushima to study the earthquake faults surrounding the plant. According to the joint proposal PG&E has spent $50 million to get approval to run both reactors an additional 20 years.

As clarified during a Tuesday, June 21 press conference, there were no state or federal agencies, or any consumer group representatives, involved in the bargaining process.

Bloody Land Lease Fight Anticipated

One issue affecting the timing of the announced deal was the near-term need for lease extensions for state-owned tidelands occupied by the plant’s cooling water structures.

Those 49-year leases expire before Diablo Canyon’s licenses expire because the construction project took 15 years instead of the allotted nine.

Without an extension the state had a legal hammer with which to force units to stop running in 2018 and 2019. Normally, continuing already existing uses of similar leased land is a routine, non-contentious matter.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), former mayor of San Francisco who is now running for governor, is a Diablo Canyon opponent.

“I just don’t see that this plant is going to survive beyond 2024, 2025,” Newsom told the Cal Coast News in January. “I just don’t see that. Now, I absolutely may be wrong, but that’s my punditry. And there is a compelling argument as to why it shouldn’t.”

Aside: It’s not “punditry” when an influential member of a decision-making body makes a public statement about the merits of a legal request whose fate is still under discussion. It is something else entirely. End Aside.

Several of the parties involved in the closure deal had been actively pressuring the state to use the leases as a way to extract new commitments from PG&E. But under the joint proposal, the parties agreed to write a joint letter to the California Lands Commission to express support for the extensions to match up with current operating licenses without environmental reviews.

During the press conference Friends of the Earth official Erich Pica said that the letter has already been sent and expressed confidence that the recommendation will be accepted by the commission, which is scheduled to discuss the matter on June 28.

Mothers for Nuclear, Environmental Progress, Thorium Energy Alliance, Energy for Humanity, Pandora’s Promise and Californians for Green Nuclear Power have said they would attend that meeting to support the extension.

They have also organized a four-day March for Environmental Hope! that arrives in Sacramento in time to sign up for the meeting comment period.

In response to the private party deal, Environmental Progress and Mothers for Nuclear issued a press release that said, in part, “ the back-room Diablo Canyon deal—-negotiated by corrupt institutions behaving unethically and perhaps illegally—-will fail….

“It will fail because when people understand that the proposal is based on a big lie—-that Diablo can be closed without increasing fossil fuel use, methane emissions and carbon emissions—-they will reject it, and the leadership of the institutions who negotiated it.”

Robert Stone, the director of Pandora’s Promise, said, “It’s a mathematical certainty that closing nuclear plants results in more fossil fuel burning and emissions.”

50% RPS Excludes Nuclear

Tony Earley, CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric, clarified during Tuesday’s press conference that SB350, a state law enacted last October, is the driving force behind the company’s decision to sit down with a group of parties with whom it has been in conflict for years.

“Last year, when SB350 was being developed, our going-in position was instead of a renewable standard it should be a greenhouse gas free standard,” he said. “We actually do believe that we could have had a lower cost strategy that way. And that we would have been using nuclear. But that argument didn’t prevail and we’ve got a state policy in place. Given the current state policies, this is the best solution for us.”

The law mandated an increase in the share of electricity from qualified renewable sources to 50% and a doubling of energy efficiency savings in electricity and natural gas end use by 2030.

As a result, Earley explained, PG&E would be able to use less and less electricity from Diablo Canyon as it took additional action to achieve its portion of the target, leaving the plant operating at a capacity factor of about 50%.

Since virtually all of the cost of owning and operating the facility is fixed, reducing output would increase the cost for each remaining kilowatt-hour, doubling the cost of its electricity even before any other cost increases due to inflation, seismic requirements or cooling water regulations.

When compared to that new cost, renewables and energy efficiency investments appear to be cost competitive, Earley told reporters.

“The reality is that as we looked at the usage of Diablo Canyon going forward, it’s capacity factor is going to fall, but since most of its costs are xed, as you get down, let’s just take a number. As the capacity factor drops to 50%, that effectively doubles the cost per kilowatt-hour.

“And then you calculate the cost of the whole package including the renewable energy and all of the other provisions, our conclusion is that it’s going to cost less overall as a total package than if you just continued to operate Diablo Canyon going forward—-under the assumption that it’s going to operate less under the energy policies that are in place.”

As additional contributing factors to the shutdown decision PG&E cited the challenge of managing overgeneration and intermittency conditions under a resource portfolio increasingly influenced by solar and wind production, the growth rate of distributed energy resources, and the potential increases in the departure of PG&E’s retail load customers to Community Choice Aggregation.

Replacement Costs Are Unknown

The agreement specifies three “tranches” of procurements. The first two, one for 2,000 GWh of energy efficiency and a second for another 2,000 from greenhouse gas free resources through an all-source solicitation, will provide a total of 4,000 GWh per year by 2031.

The third calls for PG&E to buy “incremental RPS eligible resources through competitive solicitations to voluntarily achieve a 55% RPS,” 5% higher than the state mandate. The utility will keep the 55% commitment through 2045.

When Lauren Sommer from KQED asked for some math help to understand how the targets replace the 17,000 GWh produced by Diablo Canyon, PG&E president Geisha Williams volunteered to explain.

“You have to remember that we don’t really believe that we need full output of Diablo,” Williams said. “ at’s part of the whole use case that Tony mentioned earlier, that whole capacity factor being somewhere around 50%. So there’s not a need to replace the full output of Diablo because you don’t need it. “There’s been so much energy efficiency, there’s been so much power being generated by customers using their own private solar rooftops as well as community choice aggregation, so when we look at the net need it’s much, much less than the 16,000 (GWh), which, by the way is the number from Diablo today.”

PG&E representatives deflected even ballpark cost questions on several occasions. Jim Polson of Bloomberg News pressed that issue with the last question. “You’re wanting cost recovery for this. How much will that be?”

“I have a couple of numbers,” said Williams. “For example, we’re estimating about $350 million that’s going to be associated with workforce retention, training and redevelopment costs associated with keeping our qualified workforce in place so that they can continue to operate the plant safely.”

“We talked about the $50 million associated with the community of San Luis Obispo. But the remaining costs are really all about replacement power costs. And that is to be determined, depending on what types of procurement power costs we might actually end up doing.”

One of the reasons for the lack of clear costs is that the joint proposal, which will be filed with California regulators within 60 days and possibly okayed by the end of 2017, is just the first step in the process to close Diablo Canyon, most of which depends on public utility commission decisions.

For example, it will need to approve specific plans to replace the plant’s output using the three procurement tranches.

As the utility noted in a written statement, “Any resource procurement PG&E makes will be subject to a non-bypassable cost allocation mechanism that ensures all users of PG&E’s grid pay a fair share of the costs.”

PG&E said it will also ask regulators to confirm that its investment in Diablo Canyon will be recovered by the time the plant closes, including the $1 billion needed in funds to reach the projected $3.8 billion price tag for decommissioning, and allow the recovery of the costs for employee and community transition actions.

That means it will be up to the state to decide how much ratepayers will pay to buy replacement power and amortize PG&E’s investment in building Diablo Canyon.

Bloomberg Estimate: At Least $15B

According to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts, the closure plan would cost $15 billion if all its output is replaced with solar-generated electricity at current prices.

Actual costs could be lower because the company expects to account for reduced demand and replace only part of the plant’s production, energy policy analyst Rob Barnett said in a June 22 interview.

California’s goal to get half its power from carbon-free sources by 2030 will be challenging without nuclear, although few states can match the wind and solar resources of California, said Kit Konolige, co-author of the analysis.

“If you were to take all the energy from Diablo Canyon and say, ‘I want to replace that with solar,’ this is an estimate of that investment,” Barnett said.

Diablo Canyon’s two reactors account for 20% of annual power production in PG&E’s territory, according to the utility owner’s agreement to shut the plant.

Based on current prices and generating capacity for solar power, the company would need 10,500 MW of new solar installations to replace all of Diablo Canyon’s output, the research concluded.

“Gas-power plants will probably be needed for backup when wind and solar plants aren’t available,” Barnett and Konolige wrote. “Greater use of natural gas may make California’s emission goals more challenging to meet.”

This was bound to happen. Social media turbo-charged the anti intellectualism which stemmed from postmodernism. And now we are in a new world where facts, evidence, simply don’t matter as much as the have. Everyone is an expert. The truth is whatever your friends say it is. The people in California are antiscience.

Of course people are not to blame. All the blame is for the intellectuals. They dropped the ball. They didn’t challenge nonsense enough and nonsense doesn’t go away by itself. No?

Perhaps part of the problem is that people who enjoy intellectual exercise spend too much time looking down on others and not enough time generating enthusiasm and excitement in learning.

There doesn’t have to be a choice between being smart and informed compared to athletic, healthy and outgoing. We don’t have to dumb down our communications to make them interesting and attractive, even if a bit challenging.

Social media turbo-charged the anti intellectualism which stemmed from postmodernism.

On the contrary, postmodernism is a result of “intellectuals” gone amuck. It’s basically a reaction of the scholars in the humanities that resulted from the feeling of being left out by all of the vast scientific and technical progress of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Postmodernism is not “anti-intellectual”; it’s more like intellectual snobbery on steroids. Gone is reason and any semblance of rigor. They have been replaced by big words that sound impressive, but mean nothing. This wouldn’t be too bad if it were restricted to their own little clubs (like philosophy departments), but the postmodernists overstep their bounds and attack science outright.

All of this has troubling consequences for society as a whole. Laymen are now given a pseudo-scholarly reason to distrust scientific research and scientific institutions. If everything is relative and based on perception (as the postmodernists claim), then intuition trumps evidence, and intuition is often wrong and is influenced by the various biases that have been collected over a lifetime. It’s basically a step backward into the superstitions that have been with mankind since before the very earliest beginnings of civilization and which we had only just begun to dispel in modern times.

Go to a book store such as Barnes and Noble. You will note that the shelf space taken up by religious and “new age” books is at least double that devoted to science. Yet how much have religion or new age mysticism changed?

Then of course, books on dieting also take up much shelf space. Even as the population munches its way toward morbid obesity.

Jerry brown is pro mandatory vaccination and anti nuclear (I’m assuming that his views haven’t changed since he took part in an anti nuclear March). I don’t know if their is a correlation between the two issues.

Whats interesting anout these kinds of unscientific generalizations and assumptions, (offered by Brian and a couple of others), is their complete lack of substantiation for their claims of correlation. Many times I’ve opined here that when one reads such unfounded blather, it calls into question the validity of ANY claims made by those offering the blather. Its like when one criticises Israel, they are inmediately confronted with some mindless fool pointing their finger and spitting the accusation of anti-semitism Or, in this case, being a Californian must mean you are unscientific, anti nuclear, a greeny, and anti vaccination. And, in Brian’s bizzarro world, thats “just the tip of iceberg”. And gee, doncha know, Californians are fleeing the state in droves. Hey, don’t ask for stats, a participant on Rod’s blog made the claim, so it must be so, eh? Sometimes, I’d like to see the look on Rod’s face when a few here offer their BS. I firmly believe Rod sees a way forward for NE, and its gotta be painful seeing ill advised NE advocates doing their darndest to to push the fence sitters into the anti camp.

I’ll admit that it’s often painful to watch the way that nuclear energy advocates and working professionals look down upon those who have not yet recognized the potential benefits of the technology. It also pains me to realize how few of them recognize the potential themselves and fight amongst each other to claim that their chosen favorite way to use nuclear energy is the best, to the exclusion of all other ideas or technologies.

Such is the risk one takes by publishing material specifically chosen to upset firmly held belief systems and to break up carefully hoarded rice bowls.

Its comical seeing how many here are willing to categorize and stereotype people using geography as a rationale. I thought this was a site that prides itself on science, not ignorant sputtering BS. Are you “scientists” really of the mind that you can judge a person’s opinions and beliefs merely by their location? I lived in N. Idaho when Butler and the Aryan Nation were crapping on Idaho soil. So, what, Idaho was a state full of skinheads and Nazis? The partisan ignorance reflected in some of the comments here is sometimes appalling. “California” ain’t the problem here. Big business in collusion with government is the problem. It is sheer buffoonery to opine that that is a dynamic unique to California. Or, (as I’m sure Brian would be willing to blather), even unique to the left.

I have a friend who is fond of sniveling about how he’s sorry he came to California. The degree of his sniveling is only surpassed by his willingness to swallow the swill fed to him by the likes of Fox News and Donald Trump. Never mind he is here, gainfully employed, beccause he couldn’t find work, or support his family, in Ohio.

“Parental refusal and delay of childhood vaccines has increased in recent years and is believed to cluster in some communities. Such clusters could pose public health risks and barriers to achieving immunization quality benchmarks. Our aims were to (1) describe geographic clusters of underimmunization and vaccine refusal, (2) compare clusters of underimmunization with different vaccines, and (3) evaluate whether vaccine refusal clusters may pose barriers to achieving high immunization rates.

“METHODS: We analyzed electronic health records among children born between 2000 and 2011 with membership in Kaiser Permanente Northern California. …

“CONCLUSIONS: Underimmunization and vaccine refusal cluster geographically. Spatial scan statistics may be a useful tool to identify locations with challenges to achieving high immunization rates, which deserve focused intervention.”

Researches have noted anecdotally that these clusters tend to be highly geographically correlated with the locations of Whole Foods stores. 😉

How many of these people that don’t vaccinate are either new immigrants from third-world countries or illegal aliens?

Not many at all, perhaps almost none, according to the available data.

Did you know that, these days, the immunization rate for measles is higher in Third-World places like El Salvador (94%) than it is in the US (91%)? And the rate in the US has been trending downward, whereas the rates in most of the Third World has been trending upward. Keep in mind that California is one of the states that is pulling down the US average — so it is much less than 91% in many places there.

The problem is not immigrants, whether legal or not. Most of these people come from places that know real diseases — not the diseases of affluence like obesity and cancer — and so, they will take any opportunity they can get to get their children vaccinated, and there are plenty of opportunities available in the US.

No, this trend comes from the behavior of upper and upper-middle class people, mostly white with left-leaning views, who have been spoiled for so long that they have forgotten what real disease is. Therefore, they feel the need to invent problems for themselves with convenient, feel-good solutions, such as buying “organic” food.

They live in a small bubble, they feel themselves privileged, and they are extremely selfish about their own protection from imaginary dangers that have been reinforced by junk science. This explains why they are against GMO crops and why they don’t have their kids vaccinated. It also explains why they almost universally are against nuclear power.

My comment is off topic and anecdotal but does loop back to the issue of who supports nuclear power similar to Brian’s

I used to live in an area where many parents (mothers to be specific) had opted out of the routine vaccination spectrum for their children. This was based on the anti-science position of the mercury scare and the fact that a very small percentage of children have a reaction to the vaccines. This can become scary to a parent when they have that message pounded into their heads day after day, similar to the scare messages regarding radiation.

We made sure that our son was up-to-date with his vaccinations prior to him starting school, not just because it is the correct thing to do but the concern that he could become affected due to contact with a number of unvaccinated kids. Out of a class of 25, at least 5 were unvaccinated when kindergarten started, over 20% unvaccinated. When I stared school there were zero unvaccinated. Times have changed and not for the better in this regard.

The area we lived in was also a high international travel and immigration area.

A measles outbreak occurred due to travelers from somewhere in Africa or Indonesia that infected a group of local people.

The public authorities had already been warning that the area was prime for a measles outbreak due to a historic low vaccination rate because of the mistaken belief the vaccines were either unnecessary or were harmful to children. So they went into action with warnings about vaccinating for measles and polio. Then they offered free vaccinations, no questions asked.

The TV crews were showing pictures of the lines of people who came to be vaccinated. Predominately the people standing in the line to receive the vaccinations were non-white. The people who were protesting the free “child killing vaccinations” were predominately white and obviously privileged.

That same general group of vaccination protesters are also active in the local anti-nuclear groups who are actively working to shut down nuclear power plants.

So, yes there is at least an anecdotal correlation between the privileged class of people who reside on the both coasts, haven’t vaccinated their children, have never personally experienced the devastating effects of measles or polio and are pushing to shut down nuclear power plants to pave the way for the wind and solar takeover of the grid. They are a small subset of the larger anti-nuclear protest groups but they are loud and currently have the ear of the politicians regarding nuclear power issues.

@ Brian and Bill: Oddly enough, Melinda at the Gates Foundation reports similar behavior in the African bush. Their mobile clinics come into a region and set up shop, there’s no shortage of clients. Mother’s walk their kids half day each way, carrying those too young to walk, for a shot at free vaccination. These women aren’t dumb; they’ve seen first hand the death and devastation of Real Disease.

Yes. People will have their biases. Not everyone here shares these particular biases. I agree that certain other “groups” in the United States are much of a severe and acute threat against science (and a severe threat on many other fronts), but I do believe that the green movement, which nowadays is generally wholly “left” and Democrat, bears a majority of the fault for not having nuclear power. It pains me that the so-called environmentalists are the biggest stumbling block to fixing the environment. AFAICT, the rank and file and even some of the leaders accept science as a legitimate discipline, but they use bad numbers, bad arguments, bad authorities, in the context of a wrong-headed conspiracy theory, and thereby reach their conclusion of “anti-nuclear”. It all seems perfectly reasonable and rational and /scientific/ to them.

In an ideal world, we’d just educate them about the facts. Unfortunate, they’re not very good critical thinkers and scientists. And that is not definitely not a unique symptom of the left, and I would even daresay that certain other groups have a much more severe problem in that area.

However, that’s neither here nor there. I don’t want to start a wide-ranging political debate here. This should be the place where hopefully we can make some constructive progress together on this one issue, without the other issues getting in the way.

Rod – thanks for the post. There’s a relevant post at Energy Matters titled El Hierro completes a year of full operation (euanmearns.com/el-hierro-completes-a-year-of-full-operation/) that my crystal ball says will be completely ignored by relevant Californians and wind and solar disciples everywhere.

El Hierro is the island in the Canary Islands that is trying to run their grid on 100% wind and solar, mainly wind. The tl/dr: is that it’s not working, but the article does say that the operator, GdV, doesn’t publish performance data or information on its operating procedures.

One of the things that really struck me was the approach to grid stability that abuses pumped hydro storage:

During lower-wind periods generation is matched to demand using mostly diesel for load-following, assisted or replaced by wind and hydro generation when available. During higher-wind periods diesel generation is used in baseload mode and held stable at levels of 1.6MW or higher. Load-following is performed by switching wind generation between the grid and the GdV pumping plant, which wastes the excess power by pumping water uphill from the lower to the upper reservoir and letting it flow down again without turning the hydro turbines. In short, the hydro system is being used as a dynamic resistor – a far cry from its intended purpose.

I applaud El Hierro for having the guts to put their money and their grid (and potentially health and welfare) on the line to actually test a wind and solar based grid. IMO they should be trumpeting their data to the world as well, so we could learn from their experience. (Some of us actually might learn.)

I would applaud them more if they would, shortly, declare that ‘enough is enough’, set their primary goal to be grid stability and reliability, and welcome building and testing of small modular reactors to power El Hierro 24/7/365.

And that’s why it needs to be– Federally mandated– that a growing percentage of electricity generated (kilowatt hours) by a utility has to be– carbon neutral– until the 10% level is reached by 2020 (already reached by most utilities), 50% level by 2030, and 90% by 2040.

A 100% sin tax should be slapped on all carbon polluting electricity generation by individual utilities that fail to reach the Federal mandates.

This would provide a powerful incentive for individual utilities to avoid the sin tax by keeping their current nuclear power plants operating, purchasing nuclear power plants or nuclear power from other utilities and by building their own.

IMHO, one should avoid the bureaucracy as much as reasonably possible, which means in this case IMHO giving them little ways of discretion. And that means, IMHO, just throw a flat carbon tax. No “mandates”. No “targets”. Just a simple and flat carbon tax.

Sorry for double-posting. Specifically, as far as I can tell, “cap and trade” is a scam that is designed to make rich bankers and financial advisors. Don’t do that. Again, just do a much simpler and IMHO much more effective plan: A flat carbon tax on every unit of greenhouse gas emitted into the air (weighted according to greenhouse gas effect).

Rod, After reading this article I can’t help but think that PG&E after much study realized that the deck was stacked against them and went for the best deal that they could get. Your title says it all, “California Renewables Mandates And “Non-bypassable Charges” Make Diablo Canyon Closure Agreement A Winner For PG&E”. PG&E recognized that fighting the California laws with their mandates telling them how to run their business and how much renewable energy sources they would have to use at the expense of nuclear power was a “no-win scenario”. All of these mandated directives from the politicians has changed the business model for nuclear power making it unprofitable. PG&E didn’t just take the easy way out. They took the only way out available to them. They are going to give their “customers” what they want…no matter how much it costs, what it does to emissions, or how it impacts grid stability. My main regret is that we keep hearing from folks like Al Gore the following statements concerning the demise of our industry: Ultimately, Mr. Gore said in a recent telephone interview, economics may accomplish much of what governments have so far failed to do. Plunging costs of renewable energy make it more competitive than ever with fossil fuels. Similarly, the former vice president said, the biggest obstacle for nuclear power could be the expense of building new reactors. “I don’t have a theological opposition to nuclear power,” he said. “It’s simply not cost competitive.” +++ I’ve had this image for some time of our industry represented by a figure similar to the ghost of Marley, Scrooge’s deceased business partner (A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens). This figure is wrapped in chains and weighed down by regulations, government mandates, anti-nukes, fear, uncertainty and doubt. Unfortunately, I don’t see a happy ending coming anytime soon.

For those not familiar with Swift’s work, in Lilliput, Gulliver is a giant. The petty, tiny and weak bureaucrats and tyrants tie him down with every thread they can find. Gulliver’s natural polite nature makes him accede to this treatment for a while. Finally he rises up and throws off the threads.

Nuclear fission energy is not a ghost full of regrets for having lived a life of selfish behavior harmful to others; it is an incredibly powerful giant that has allowed itself to be tied down by fearful people who recognized its threat to their carefully constructed positions of wealth and power.

As I understand it, the California definition of “renewable” energy is a list of those technologies that have received political approval. It is not a set of objective criteria that applicant technologies can use in a court of law or to an unbiased arbitrator that they score high enough on the scale to qualify for the specified special treatment.

Most Renewable Portfolio Standards exclude nuclear (I believe Ohio is the only state that allows nuclear, and even then it is “advanced nuclear”). The list of technologies supported likely varies from state to state (I have not looked at all of the various state portfolio standards) but typically includes the items that most would think of as “renewable” such as wind and solar. The standards also include geothermal, hydro, and the various types of biomass.

The bottom line is that RPS’ are at best only a partial solution and at worse a complete political farce. If the goal is to be “clean” then the “clean energy portfolios” are a step in the right direction. However, the very nature of these types of plans means that someone/some group gets to pick and choose technology.

Of course allowing politicians to reward one industry versus another will cause graft. It’s captain obvious.

If the goal is CO2 reduction the reward that and let the private sector choose the technology.

An idea would be to use Carbon Intensity per Kilowatt (CIPK) as the benchmark. Reward those technologies based on low CIPK equally . Choose a baseline . An idea would be use natural gas as the baseline since it is the majority fuel.

So all the greenies have to do is co-write a letter to the California Land Commission. The greenies’ obligation is met regardless if the CLC denies renewal. Somehow, I don’t think they will protest too much.

I wonder if the CLC is as stacked with goofballs as the California Air Resources Board.

People will pay through the nose to buy what they perceive good and healthy for them. Forget high end neighborhoods; You’d be surprised how well stocked with bottled and spring water Walgreens and supermarkets here are and how regularly Great Bear bottled water trucks make rounds in lower class black communities here in Queens. Rich or poor, many folks unrightly distrust our Catskill tap water and they’ll pay up extra bottled than drink “free”. That same mentally is driving our nuclear plants out; people on Long Island will grudgingly but happily pay up for the solar power boom here on Long Island while dancing on the corpse of Shoreham simply because they perceive solar is safe and nukes bad-bad-bad for everything. This isn’t rocket science. If the lay public thought that nuclear were safe as the sun and keeps a clean environment to boot they’d pay up extra for nuclear over oil and gas and demand politicians comply in a heartbeat. What happened to Canyon and VY never would’ve been allowed to happen by health-crazed public demand, no more than they’d allow the Feds to shutdown all spring water plants even if tap water is free and safe enough. BUT people just are not getting the enlightenment. Never had since TMI. Can’t blame the antis that nuclear’s lost here. I mean, U.S. nuclear is in an emergency life support condition here yet the main nuclear advocate (cough cough cough) orgs are still just mostly reporting how nice their last conference was and slapping another’s promotions on the back and going yippee that Girl Scout troops have nuke merit badges. No post Canyon emergency sites of NPPs in equal jeopard to circle the wagons for legal and PR campaigns. And we’re going to blame the antis for our bad luck? The cleanest safest HOMEGROWN energy source known to man which the U.S. pioneered and first harnessed and which every American ought be proud of since 1st grade yet our population can’t wait to shuck off every last one of them! So insane one can gag. Past ledgers and stockholders, the fate of nuclear has always been at its core a public perception PR game which the nuclear community always played with a dead man’s hand.

This will take a national awareness campaign and not just at technical shows and seminars which the general public never sees. Think TV Ads like the stupid GE windmill ads.

The biggest thing the public doesn’t know is that the intermittents require natural gas back-up. Its obvious to engineers and technical folks but its not to the general public. Thus they readily believe you can replace a nuke plant with wind/solar.

So let’s make them 100% aware that shutting operating plants will absolutely dramatically increase CO2 emissions.

I’m tired of reading article after article about how its just the economics. Its not. If it was economics there would be no wind/solar.

People pay a lot more now for the miniscule wind/solar contributions to the grid. If they knew the full story I think they would be willing to pay a slight bit more to keep the plants running. 60% + of our CO2 free generation!

>> This will take a national awareness campaign and not just at technical shows and seminars which the general public never sees. Think TV Ads like the stupid GE windmill ads. <<

So way overdue it'll never be done. We got how many plants down and more to go and does anyone see any major self-preservation public education action by the "nuclear community" going on? Who needs Greenpeace to do nuclear in?

Does this agreed upon closure of Diablo Canyon mean that PG&E is now off the hook for proving that the plant is safe for the new USGS earthquake data? The USGS data showed that the design basis earthquake for the plant does not envelope the USGS data. PG&E was tasked by the NRC to provide new seismic analysis for all safety related structures, systems and components.

As I said in a previous post when the power runs out they will scramble to install gas turbines. I would also like to point out that these renewables will most likely never be constructed. There is something missing from the posts and discussions on this site , that is the fact there exist a wide spread and growing anti- renewables movement in this country. This is true mainly for wind but also for some types of solar. Pull the subsides and renewables will vanish. Check out some of anti-wind sites and you will see what I mean.

Doesn’t matter. Folks will happily pay for wind and solar subsides even after countrysides are littered with their rusting hulks because they’re FAR more scared of nuclear than repulsed by abandoned and derelict wind and solar farms.

I think there are some people like that but not all , and if California wants to pave over their state with solar panels and wind mills for unreliable power then they should pay for it , not the U.S. taxpayer. I think the rising tide of anti- renewables will prevail. These low density energy sources require deployment of large amounts of equipment covering vast areas. This is inefficient , costly , and disruptive of the existing environment. The wind mils are strongly suspected of of causing health problems , very annoying , unsightly , they kill birds and bats , and much as I don’t like bats they keep insect populations under control. One other thing the recent BLM plan for the southern California desert formulated with environmental groups greatly restricts the amount of land for wind power development. Anyone ever point out this fact ?

Hi Rod. I like your Swift analogy: the giant that eventually rises to save the people from themselves. All those ropes and constructs that he overcomes are represented by folks like you and me and some of your readers. Persistence and righteousness go hand in hand. Why not a “friendly giant?” It really fits well to describe the vast difference that nuclear power has over all other existing forms of energy production. Let each of our individual grassroot attempts be effectively the successful removal of the bonds enabling the emancipation of the friendly giant.

“Clean (low-carbon) energy as a percentage of electricity globally has been on the decline for the last 20 years — from 37 to 32 percent since the mid-1990s. This is not just because fossil energy is increasing faster than clean energy. It’s also because nuclear power is on the decline in absolute terms.”

……What about the renewable energy part of the bill? Existing law requires California to receive 33% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Officials say utilities are on track to hit that target. The bill would set a new goal of 50% by 2030. Last week, some of the state’s biggest utilities pledged their *support* for the measure after changes were made that would allow them more flexibility in buying electricity generated by sources such as solar and wind……

…..Utility companies had a huge stake in a provision requiring them to derive half of their electricity from renewable sources in coming years. They spent heavily but saw their cumulative total decline in the third quarter.

Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Southern California Edison and Sempra Energy, which oversees San Diego Gas and Electric Company, spent a combined $1.3 million on lobbying in the year’s third quarter, bringing their total to around $3.2 million on the year…..

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The passage of S.B. 350 smacks of political corruption, not a valid public policy process.

PG&E executives during the 20 July 2016 public meeting in San Luis Obispo, California regarding their so-called “Joint Proposal” then had the nerve to claim the reason they had to shut down DCPP was a consequence of California legislation, including the recently enacted SB 350, which PG&E lobbied for.

I will be refining the above information after I have completed additional research. I recently learned that PG&E aggressively lobbied for inclusion of nuclear power within the so-called renewable mandates contained in S.B. 350. This may account for the bulk of their lobbying expenditures. Unfortunately, their lobbying efforts were not successful. We will be closely monitoring the “Zero Emissions Credit (ZEC)” approach being advanced in New York State. If the ZEC approach is successful, I believe that CGNP and other true environmental organizations should push for adoption of the ZEC approach in California.